{"id":28559,"date":"2018-04-27T03:39:44","date_gmt":"2018-04-27T10:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=28559"},"modified":"2018-04-25T14:23:02","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T21:23:02","slug":"try-to-reduce-screen-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2018\/04\/27\/try-to-reduce-screen-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Try to reduce screen time"},"content":{"rendered":"

In her latest book, Be the Parent, Please<\/em> (Templeton Press, 2018), author Naomi Schaefer Riley reminds parents to take back control and help their kids find healthier means of entertainment.<\/p>\n

Originally from Massachusetts, this New York mom of three kids (ages 11, 9 and 5) is no stranger to society\u2019s pressure to give children whatever they want, including the latest technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last few years, I myself struggled with the issues of how to handle screen time, and I\u2019ve watched a lot of other parents struggle with it,\u201d Schaefer Riley told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cAs a journalist, I wanted to talk to experts and do reading, and find out what the research says … and talk to parents about strategies they were using to deal with this.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pressure to hand over screens to kids starts almost immediately these days,\u201d she said, \u201cThe iPhone came out a little more than 10 years ago, coinciding with the birth of my oldest daughter. It took a couple years but, by the time she was in preschool, a lot of parents, even to have a basic conversation with another person, would hand over their phone just in order to distract the child.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, tablets and cellphones have become a source of all things entertainment for kids (let alone adults), whether that involves looking at pictures of themselves, creating videos or playing games.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen my kids were younger, we let them watch one show every night, some half-an-hour cartoon,\u201d said Schaefer Riley. \u201cThen, my son was born and the fight began over what they were watching and who gets to pick each night. And it became more of a struggle to tell them you\u2019re going to turn off the TV\u2026. A book I read enlightened me, called The Plug-In Drug<\/em>. It came out a little more than 40 years ago and was mostly about TV and videogames.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe author noted that, when you turn off a screen, it\u2019s almost like waking a child up from a nap. It\u2019s a trance-like state and they\u2019re so into it that it\u2019s almost like a change from sleep to wakefulness when you turn it off. And they become cranky. It can be as long as a half hour before they adjust back to reality. I think I was tired of the crankiness, too, of every time I turned it off, to have this fight ensue.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the Schaefer Riley house, there are a lot of toys and the kids are expected to entertain themselves without the TV. \u201cBut, a lot of parents don\u2019t make that expectation,\u201d she said. \u201cThey assume that, unless the child has a screen, the parent has to be entertaining them at all times, that the child can never be restless or irritated.\u201d<\/p>\n

She went on to explain that it\u2019s not a parent\u2019s job to ensure that their child is 100% engaged in something at all times. Instead of screens, she suggested, \u201cWhy not give your kids some pots and pans to bang together or some cardboard boxes? These are things we know are good for building fine and gross motor skills, and [that] encourage kids to explore things.<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>\u201cI think what the screens have allowed is for us to exercise more control over our kids and keep them on a tighter leash. You don\u2019t need to go all the way to the park. You can just sit in the living room and give your kid an iPad. That way, I don\u2019t need to worry about whether you know enough about crossing the street or whether you\u2019ve achieved that level of independence. The phone will allow me to have this tether on you. This is not very beneficial to kids in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n

Children are now finding tasks difficult to handle if they cannot immediately text their parents for advice or counsel about their lives, argued Schaefer Riley. There is constant communication, with technology serving as a crutch for helicopter parenting.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of parents have confessed to me … they know, deep down … that they don\u2019t need studies to tell them that their kids are on screens too much,\u201d said Schaefer Riley. \u201cParents know this.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to apply basic parenting strategies to technology, she said. \u201cI know it sounds simplistic to say, but your kid doesn\u2019t generally ask for chocolate cake for breakfast in the morning; they know there\u2019s none for breakfast. If you talk about screen-time limits and stick to them, your kid will not be on you constantly…. If you stick with the rules you set for a few weeks or months, your child will learn that there is no point in asking again; they already know what the answer is and will stop asking for things you consistently say \u2018no\u2019 to. The idea is to bring parents back to reality and back to a sense of where they do have control.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Schaefer Riley, the life skill of asking for assistance from an adult is one that many children are missing out on, due to the reliance on tablets and phones.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see the kids … my daughter is on the swim team … and they all walk out of practice and everyone is texting their parents \u2013 pick me up in five or 10 minutes outside,\u201d said Schaefer Riley. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018who are you?\u2019 These are not your chauffeurs. I think that\u2019s how we\u2019ve come to think of ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schaefer Riley said observant families, who turn off their phones on Shabbat, have an advantage, as the children come to appreciate that there is something to be gained from family time. \u201cI think,\u201d she said, \u201cthat more and more people, whether they are religious or not, are trying to find that \u2018technology Sabbath,\u2019 as they like to call it, to give themselves a break … either at meal times, or one day a week, or on vacation. It\u2019s considered a luxury now, to be able to get away from your phone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schaefer Riley emphasized that her book is not meant to scold anyone. She herself faces these challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of pressure coming from technology companies and schools, and from the culture generally, that are really pushing you to hand over these devices to your kids,\u201d she said. \u201cIt takes some willpower to say no, that\u2019s not for my child, or this much time is not for my child.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a point at which you need to go into your community and find allies,\u201d she added. \u201cEverywhere I went, every community of people I\u2019ve spoken with, there wasn\u2019t just one family trying to hold the line. There were several and, sometimes, they weren\u2019t connected with each other. But, if you do a little searching, you can find people trying to take a similar tactic, and it helps to have allies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rebeca Kuropatwa<\/strong> is a Winnipeg freelance writer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In her latest book, Be the Parent, Please (Templeton Press, 2018), author Naomi Schaefer Riley reminds parents to take back control and help their kids find healthier means of entertainment. Originally from Massachusetts, this New York mom of three kids (ages 11, 9 and 5) is no stranger to society\u2019s pressure to give children whatever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[5864,8098,7579,1881],"class_list":["post-28559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-children","tag-naomi-schaefer-riley","tag-parenting","tag-technology"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}